Copyright Trolls Now Going After Random Bloggers Who Reposted Photos
from the this-won't-end-well dept
Apparently, the Copyright Enforcement Group (CEG), one of the earliest copyright trolling operations in the US, is really building up its copyright trolling photo business. Last year, we wrote about how CEG had gone after a Lindsay Lohan fan site because the young fan had posted some (you guessed it) photos of Lohan. And now it appears that it's ramping up the practice, as a number of sites have apparently received demands from CEG for $500 because they posted a random photo which they likely found via Google's image search. Yes, reposting photos in such a manner can be copyright infringement (though, quite frequently, there may be a very strong fair use defense -- but that's very context specific), but it really does seem quite scammy to go after clearly naive internet users, who are just trying to post a photo of a red pepper to go with a blog post about vegetables.As noted by the Cashman Law Firm, this whole practice seems really icky. Yes, technically, the law may have been broken, but does anyone actually think that these users would have otherwise purchased the image? And is hitting the ordinary internet user who just wants to illustrate their blog post about red peppers with a federal lawsuit threat really seem proportionate?
On a personal note, hitting website users with a threat of a lawsuit over an image pulled from a Google image search is simply obscene. I would certainly understand such a letter if the image had a watermark pointing the user to a website where they can purchase rights to the photo without the watermark, or if there was a copyright mark on the image. Yet these photos have none of these, and they are literally trolling old websites and blogs looking for photos which were copied from other websites.And, in fact, it appears to be even worse, since that same blog post later indicates that at least some of the people being threatened had the images show up via third party RSS aggregators -- meaning they didn't post or host the image themselves. But, that's the kind of situation you get when copyright laws are completely screwy.
What makes this so obscene is that the photo copyright owners are asserting the same copyright infringement claims as do the copyright holders for the bittorrent cases we deal with daily. Along with the same copyright claims come the same shock of having the law provide statutory damages of $150,000 to the copyright holder who can prove the infringement. $150,000 for a movie download in my mind is an obscene and disproportionate punishment for the “crime” of downloading a copyrighted title. Even moreso for a photo. AND, even moreso for an unmarked and unwatermarked photo freely available on a Google image search.
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Filed Under: copyright trolls, photos
Companies: copyright enforcement group
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Yeah, it's risky to use other people's property.
Copyright is the societal deal, and not arcane in its basic principle: if it's not yours (or clearly stated to be public domain), then leave it alone.
"copyright laws are completely screwy." -- No, it's LAWYERS again. (By the way, I leave off the many pejoratives because everyone should by now know the nature of lawyers.)
BUT a federal case? Hmm. Well, you'd object to mere fines too, so a wash there. -- So how about you get one of your lawyer pals to compile and sell low-cost self-defense kits for jury trial? -- OH, right. Affordable legal help is basically frowned on by the medieval guild "bar" association, and suppressed. -- Which brings me right back to blaming LAWYERS, not copyright.
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Re: Yeah, it's risky to use other people's property.
Now that you've caught up with rest of the class would you care to explain how you think copyright law is being shown to be fit for purpose in this example?
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Re: Yeah, it's risky to use other people's property.
Just checking, you know, since you stress strict compliance with copyright law and all.
www.imdb.com/title/tt0839938/
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http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg=out+of+the+blue&Search_Cod e=TALL&PID=A_7FNojQgDVtDW1-iYna7gZD9hh7&SEQ=20130712034155&CNT=25&HIST=1
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Re: Yeah, it's risky to use other people's property.
Enlighten us please, with more of your copyright wisdom (sarcasm clearly intended).
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Re: Re: Yeah, it's risky to use other people's property.
I think it's reasonable to assume it's copyrighted if you don't know. Under current law everything is copyrighted, the picture is obviously not 95 years old and thus expired, and nobody gave you permission.
Of course, that doesn't take fair use into account. The use may well be legal. I'm just saying, assuming it's copyrighted is reasonable, and it's not reasonable to assume that anyone who puts any picture on the Internet is giving permission for that image to be copied to another website.
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If I have an antenna, I can copy TV shows I pick up out of the air to my VCR or other recording device for later viewing. I CANNOT, however, legally take that copy and put it on the Internet, or rebroadcast it on my own TV station. Similarly, just because an image is on a website and you can copy that image, that does not mean you can republish that image.
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In your argument, which we'll assume is legally correct for argumentative purposes, we would require each user of the internet to know a substantial portion of the copyright laws before posting content of any kind. A dismissive response would be to claim that no user should post anything unless they are 100% sure that posting does not violate any copyright laws, but that breaks the intent and usefulness of the internet by injecting a legal minefield in such a way that only those with the training, or capital to hire those with the training, can post content. Indeed, as we've seen here, those laws can be confusing and unclear even to parties with the means and the will to fight.
What's more, the penalties for violating the sometimes-confusing laws are greatly disproportionate to any apparent harm. Yes, let's agree that professional "bootleg" operations can cause financial harm to a business by undercutting the legal copyright holders, but that damage can be (arguably) quantitatively given an upper limit by examining the number of bootleg copies sold compared to the retail price of a legal copy. In the case of re-posting a publicly accessible image, any damage becomes nearly impossible to calculate. In the current structure of the law, statutory damages require no harm of any kind to penalize an unknowing user with life-altering fines. Just the threat of such a large penalty lends great weight to even a bogus legal threat.
In summation: While I think we agree on the technicalities of whether re-posting an image is currently illegal, I think the current copyright laws are incompatible with the internet, and how most people use the internet. If the laws were simplified, and penalties reduced to be in-line with actual damages, copyright may be more accepted and useful as part of the global communications medium that is the internet.
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Re: Yeah, it's risky to use other people's property.
Sometimes it's hard to tell. Obviously, $150,000 is excessive for someone who copied a photo they found online to a fan website. The law allows this excessive award - but, the law does not REQUIRE such an award. So where does the blame lie: with the law that allows this, or with the people who actually seek or award such amounts?
I think some of each. There should be better guidelines in the law instead of "pick a number between $750 and $150,000", and those who apply the law should do a better job of not awarding ridiculous amounts in minor cases.
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Re: Re: Yeah, it's risky to use other people's property.
The law needs to be scrapped and rewritten. Most copyright law was based on the idea that infringers were doing so in order to profit - a reasonable assumption at the time given the effort and expense involved in mass infringement. Now, people can infringe with zero effort, no cost, no intention of profit and likely zero realisation that they're even doing so in the first place. The law is based on a reality that no longer exists, and needs to be fixed.
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I've always been careful to use free images in everything I do for this reason. It takes a minute longer, but you can be certain that it's not a copyright violation.
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Re: Yeah, it's risky to use other people's property.
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When out_of_the_blue picks up the piece of paper and walks off with it, I am going to scream "you're using my copyrighted property!!" and sue him for $150,000 for copyright infringement.
When he complains that the piece of paper had no markings on it of any kind that would identify it was copyrighted, I am going to scream and throw tantrums and say "Oh well, there's no need for copyrighted images to show they are copyrighted. They can simply remain silent. And any taking of them invokes the $150,000 statutory penalty, so pay up immediately."
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Who wants to troll the trolls?
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That's organized crime. Made legal by bad laws.
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I believe there is a statute
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CEG
There has been a good deal of talk recently about the over arching "presence" of the various agencies. And it often comes from an unsuspecting poor chap who finds himself at the bad end of the blade of one of these regulatory agencies. Too late to save himself from ruin, he has no choice but to PAY. My heart is breaking-
Truth is, those elected few who are chosen by the many are too entrenched into their own aggrandizement to have bothered taking an honest look at the wording of federal regulation. That's the only reason I can come up with for the fact that this constitutional loophole has been left loose for so long. The redundant, often contradictory, vaguely written codes have trickled through, under our radar over the years. There will soon be no use for lawyers, or senators, or representatives or presidents because they have all been passing the buck of their own responsibilities through the establishment of some agency to do the job for them. The only justification for their positions now is....you guessed it: create agencies to regulate the agencies who regulate the tribunals who regulate the boards who regulate the people so that all the people will be safe and live happily ever after. Right?
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Yep, these troll are out there
Person A) Hey man, it looks like you're using my image, which is copyrighted. Can you please take it down or pay me?
Person B) OH man, sorry, that was a mistake from like 8 years ago, I don't even know where that came from, probably google. It's down.
That's all. But once some greedy scumbag sees money in the game then it becomes an aggressive shakedown. Don't give into these lawyers, apologize politely and walk away.
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